Sunday Posts

A few weeks ago, after a meeting with an old friend from Egypt in London's Southbank, I was sad and depressed: My friend, who had always agitated against Mubarak's rule while she was in London and moved back to Egypt after the Cairo spring, felt that the revolution had not moved the country forward. Mubarak is gone, but the long shadow of the army was everywhere: As she put it, the country now has a neo-liberal theocracy, a strange coalition of interests which is pushing the country to backwards. Apparently the coalition was more fragile than previously thought. Within two weeks of that meeting, protestors are back in Tahrir Square and the Army is back. The reversal of Arab Spring has now started. Indeed, the army has taken powers in the name of people, and have no doubt blessings of the US State Department. The ex-President and his team is under house arrest. The first counter-revolution in the modern time seems complete. Every Egyptian will have a view about what hap...

Protesters keep coming to Tahrir Square. The scenes, thousands of people chanting, camping up, are now part of our daily lives. The silent Egypt, oppressed and tortured by Hosni Mubarak and his thugs, is as much a history now as the Pharaoh's one. As no futurist would have crystal-gazed the scenes of a tragicomic Muammar Qaddafi, with a tattered silk robe and wielding a golden gun, being lynched by a mob, they would not have envisioned the whole Arab world enthralled by a permanent state of revolution, which seems so self-evident and self-propelling now. In a sense, twitter revolution is over. We are now in serious territory. Freedom is no longer a word in political spin, but a real aspiration. Obama recognizes that his rhetoric is catching up with him, the monster he wanted to selectively peek into has now been unleashed on the streets. This is no longer a right-wing American politician's mid-afternoon fantasy, but real blood and sweat revolution. And, if it goes on, it has ...

In Egypt, this is being called Tunisunami, but this has nothing to do with Ben Ali, and everything to do with Mubarak. This is a moment of people power. We are not colouring the revolution, but if we did, this one might be Green. But, the optimism aside, this is Obama's Tehran moment and he must decide fast and quick to avoid Carter-esque meltdown. What can he do? He needs to weigh upon Mubarak to leave. America can not afford a Tahrir Square massacre in its hand; with fighter jets flying low, this seems to be moments away now. The lameness of Hillary Clinton's statement that US does not want a take-over which does not lead to democracy shows that it is yet to make up its mind. This is not a moment of such confusing statement: Does she mean that the US remains with Mubarak and she believes that there is democracy in Egypt? If Mubarak does not go now, he will fall: With him, he will take the whole US policy in Middle East to grave. This would not remain a matter of freedom and d...

About a week back, while we were following the events in Tunisia, I pondered whether this will be the 'Domino' moment . A week on, with protests spreading to Algeria, Yemen and finally Egypt, it indeed seems so. In fact, Egypt seems to be on the brink and Hosni Mubarak, the dictator of Egypt and the bulwark against freedom and democracy in the Middle East, seems poised to go. Finally. Mubarak indeed is a survivor and it is still too early to write him off. Joe Biden had to eat his liberal credentials only a few hours back to deny that Hosni Mubarak is a dictator. No one pushed him on the point almost out of sympathy: American administrations seems to be completely clueless on what to do. They are currently opting for a holding strategy. They let Ben Ali run from Tunisia and held the country through a proxy, expecting the crowd power to subside. That did not work. They are on similar paths in Egypt, trying to ditch Mubarak and getting behind the Army or another proxy administ...